We were looking forward to exploring Tauranga, particularly because it is the hometown of Cory, who will become our son-in-law in less than 2 months time! The weather, however, did not want to cooperate. We breakfasted and prepared as normal, but today there were no shuttles from the port. We walked down to the bottom of the gangway, and by then I was sopping wet in the rain and the wind, so Tom continued on his mission, and I returned to the ship. I thought I’d go via the computer tech guy to check his hours, but Ricardo was there, and assisting one person in front of me, so I waited. Ricardo found that the pics I’d been taking for the last day and a half on the iPhone were all live shots, and my iPad ... read more

Things I keep forgetting: * yesterday while we were eating brekky we were watching some tiny dolphins in the water beside the shop - turns out they are the smallest dolphins in the world, and named Hector Doplphins. * our sommelier, Janine, was tellling us she lost her dad during covid - not from covid but from dengue fever, all of the hospital beds in the Philippines were taken up by covid patients. * there was a group of staff, wearing their uniforms, at the show the other night. They were the “new contracts”. The new staff get to see a show during their first week. * we keep finding people in lifts who haven’t pressed numbers. Today at lunch time we accidentally pressed the up button again before a full elevator departed so the door ... read more

When we awoke this morning we were making our way toward Port Chalmers, a delightful port town serving Dunedin. The journey into port reminded me so much of the journey into Belfast with small houses scattered along the way at the base of lush green hills. We have decided to do no shore excursions with Celebrity as they are so overpriced. We went up to the cafe for breakfast and were sitting out on deck as we were docking. On the wharf opposite us was a large crowd of Port Authority workers lined up welcoming us in. A group of high school students assembled on our dock and sang cultural songs to the delight of everyone who heard them. After brekky we prepared to go ashore, and then spent about 45 mins in a line up ... read more

Last night we had really calm seas and we slept soooo soundly - gosh it was good! But this morning we had a 9am lecture to get to and brekky had to be quick so we went of the the Oceanview Cafe, right down the back of the ship, the buffet, and wow, was it busy!! But it still makes for a time efficient breakfast. We were even still able to have our mimosas - starting a new habit here! 😂 Our first lecture at 9am was a very engaging fellow named Milos - he talked about volcanoes, glaciers and tectonic plates our grandson Thomas would have loved this talk. We were amazed to hear that anyone believing in tectonic plates and their movement back in the 1960s was thought to be crazy. It wasn’t a ... read more

After a really long morning (because we were already packed of course), and after completing half of our safety information on the Celebrity Cruises app, we had an early lunch of a tomato and cheese sandwich before our lovely Jess and little James came to pick us up. We were very lucky to have Jess offer us a lift to Circular Quay, because we found that trains were stopping at Blacktown and then we would have had to trundle all of our luggage over to a bus into Central, then go into the station and get another train to Circular Quay. And it was a rainy day. We were actually supposed to spend Friday night in a 3 star hotel in Liverpool St in the city, that was not handy to any stations, and who told ... read more